Taj Mahal Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Taj Mahal. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Rubbish. The Taj Mahal is only a hundred eighty-six square feet. This house has twenty-five thousand." I stared at him blankly. "I was kidding," he said. I stared at him blankly. "All right, I wasn't kidding. Let's go, shall we.?" "After you, my liege.
Michelle Hodkin (The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #1))
It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.
Deb Caletti (The Queen of Everything)
She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.
Raymond Chandler (The Little Sister (Philip Marlowe, #5))
The Taj Mahal rises above the banks of the river like a solitary tear suspended on the cheek of time.
Rabindranath Tagore
We took the elevator back down from the first observation level of the Eiffel Tower and started walking in he direction of the Taj Mahal
D.J. MacHale (The Soldiers of Halla (Pendragon #10))
Marble, I perceive, covers a multitude of sins.
Aldous Huxley
if I'd ever grown prosperous like ShahJahan was, I'd not have waited for my beloved's death before I erected a Taj Mahal.
Suman Pokhrel
Taj Mahal is not just a monument, but a symbol of love.
Suman Pokhrel
She is the glorious reincarnation of every woman ever loved. It was her face that launched the Trojan War, her untimely demise that inspired the building of India's Taj Mahal. She is every angel in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.
Leslye Walton (The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender)
Rahul had wondered how someone could love their beloved so much that their dedication to them became one of the wonders of the world.
Faraaz Kazi
All right fine!” she snapped. “I’m in love with you. There. I said it. Now get over yourself.” “You know, I think those are the words written on the Taj Mahal: ‘I said it. Now get over yourself.’ Some of the greatest love stories have started with those words.
Shelly Laurenston (Bear Meets Girl (Pride, #7))
I found the Taj Mahal as the most appropriate example of artistically expressed love.
Suman Pokhrel
To say she was attractive would be an understatement. Calling her 'attractive' would be like calling the Taj Mahal a marble grave.
Mallika Nawal (I'm a Woman & I'm on SALE (I'm a Woman, #1))
We return to you, O earth, the things which you have given us willingly and most graciously; with our hearts, hands and minds, in the best way we know how.
Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal was built as a team; without a team, it was a far dream.
Vinita Kinra
Shah Jahan who proved an emperor to be shorter than a lover, who turned a grave into a temple who gave his beloved a place of God and converted love into a prayer.
Suman Pokhrel
The world believes it was built by love but reading Shah Jahan’s own words on the Taj, one could say it was grief that built the Taj Mahal and it was sorrow that saw it through sixteen years till completion.
Aysha Taryam (The Opposite of Indifference: A Collection of Commentaries)
But Mehrunnisa did not know then, would never know, by giving her blessings to this marriage she had set into progress a chain of events that would eventually erase her name from history's pages. Or that Arjumand would become the only Mughal woman posterity would easily recognize. Docile, seemingly tractable and troublesome Arjumand would eclipse even Mehrunnisa, cast her in a shadow...because of the monument Khurram would build in Arjumand's memory - the Taj Mahal.
Indu Sundaresan (The Feast of Roses (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #2))
Musuh membiak seperti tikus. Kau injak mereka, kau racun mereka, kau bakar mereka, akan lebih banyak lagi yang muncul! Tidak ada bedanya apakah kau hidup pada masa perang atau damai, makmur atau kelaparan! Musuh selalu menyusun rencana di belakangmu. (Shah Jahan dalam Taj Mahal, Kisah Cinta Abadi)
John Shors
When you left you left behind a field of silent flowers under a sky full of unstirred clouds...you left a million butterflies mid-silky flutters You left like midnight rain against my dreaming ears Oh and how you left leaving my coffee scentless and my couch comfortless leaving upon my fingers the melting snow of you you left behind a calendar full of empty days and seasons full of aimless wanders leaving me alone with an armful of sunsets your reflection behind in every puddle your whispers upon every curtain your fragrance inside every petal you left your echoes in between the silence of my eyes Oh and how you left leaving my sands footless and my shores songless leaving me with windows full of moistened moonlight nights and nights of only a half-warmed soul and when you left... you left behind a lifetime of moments untouched the light of a million stars unshed and when you left you somehow left my poem...unfinished. (Published in Taj Mahal Review Vol.11 Number 1 June 2012)
Sanober Khan
There is always the fear that a wonder of the world can’t live up to expectations. Not so. The Taj Mahal was breathtakingly beautiful – if anything, better even than I’d been told. Beauty like that is too dazzling to be imagined.
Lauren Bacall (By Myself and Then Some)
No, no, don’t touch your mother just before the baby is born. Now it will be a girl child, because you are one. Run along now. Take your evil eye with you.” “Ghias, we must be careful not to teach the girls too much. How will they ever find husbands if they are too learned? The less they know, the less they will want of the outside world.
Indu Sundaresan (The Twentieth Wife (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #1))
If I had the true colours to describe what I feel for you, I wouldn't waste time stringing beads of words... Instead I would run to kiss you and leave monuments on you:- pyramids on your lips, the Taj Mahal on your skin, and the Eiffel tower in your heart. NOTESEUM | A storm I chased
Daniel Derrick Mwesigye
Next morning get up early and go to the Taj Mahal. Perhaps you've heard of it, big white building named after that Indian restaurant on the Lothian Road.
David Nicholls (One Day)
I've been around and seen the Taj Mahal and the Grand Canyon and Marilyn Monroe's footprints outside Grauman's Chinese, but I've never seen my mother wash her own hair.
Marcia Aldrich
With time and a kindly librarian, any unskilled person can learn how to build a replica of the Taj Mahal.
Maya Angelou (A Song Flung Up to Heaven)
Human beings, for some reason or another, like symmetry. You leave a bunch of them next to a jungle for a couple of days and you'll come back to find an ornamental garden. We take stones and turn them into the Taj Mahal or St. Paul's Cathedral.
Mark Forsyth (The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase)
He could describe walking towards the Taj Mahal – ho-hum, thinks the reader, immediately in the realm of the tacky postcard – and still give you a wholly fresh impression of the exact scale and actual presence of that white tomb; delicate but powerful, compact and yet boundlessly imposing. Epic grace. With those two words he encapsulated it, and you knew exactly what he meant.
Iain Banks (The Crow Road)
This great Mughal Emperor [Akbar] was illiterate; he could neither read nor write. However, that had not stopped Akbar from cultivating the acquaintance of the most learned and cultured poets, authors, musicians, and architects of the time - relying solely on his remarkable memory during conversations with them.
Indu Sundaresan (The Twentieth Wife (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #1))
The four borders of the Taj Mahal are designed to be identical, as if there were a mirror situated on one side, though one can never tell on which one. Stone reflected in the water. God reflected in human beings. Love reflected in heartbreak. Truth reflected in stories. We live, toil and die under the same invisible dome. Rich and poor, Mohammedan and baptized, free and slave, man and woman, Sultan and mahout, master and apprentice … I have come to believe that if there is one shape that reaches out to all of us, it is the dome. That is where all the distinctions disappear and every single sound, whether of joy or sorrow, merges into one huge silence of all-encompassing love. When I think of this world in such a way, I feel dazed and disoriented, and cannot tell any longer where the future begins and the past ends; where the West falls and the East rises.
Elif Shafak (The Architect's Apprentice)
It is good to recall that three centuries ago, around the year 1660, two of the greatest monuments of modern history were erected, one in the West and one in the East; St. Paul's Cathedral in London and the Taj Mahal in Agra. Between them, the two symbolize, perhaps better than words can describe, the comparative level of architectural technology, the comparative level of craftsmanship and the comparative level of affluence and sophistication the two cultures had attained at that epoch of history. But about the same time there was also created—and this time only in the West—a third monument, a monument still greater in its eventual import for humanity. This was Newton's Principia, published in 1687. Newton's work had no counterpart in the India of the Mughals.
Abdus Salam (Ideals and Realities: Selected Essays of Abdus Salam)
It looks like the house of Ali Baba! Or the Moulin Rouge! Or the Taj Mahal! If only she would decide on a country and have done with it. Is that what passes for modern décor?
Sarah Waters (The Paying Guests)
Shah Jahan built Taj Mahal because he was a king, I wrote a beautiful book for my wife, though I was never an Author…
Ved Nishad (I Lost My Soul)
Oh God. Goddammit. I never got to see the pyramids. Or the Taj Mahal. I ...I never even got to leave the country." "Don't sweat it, brother. You got to live in NYC. You didn't miss shit.
Brian K. Vaughan
She sighed and lifted her hand to run it along the edge of his lip. "You want to stay here, in the employees' quarters? Wouldn't you be a little out of place?" "If you're here,it will be the Taj Mahal.
Sandra Chastain (Penthouse Suite)
We have scholars galore, and kings and emperors, and statesmen and military leaders, and artists in profusion, and inventors, discoverers, explorers - but where are the great lovers? After a moment's reflection one is back to Abelard and Heloise, or Anthony and Cleopatra, or the story of the Taj Mahal. So much of it is fictive, expanded and glorified by the poverty-stricken lovers whose prayers are answered only by myth and legend.
Henry Miller
I apply the warrior energy to the blues by tapping into the ancient job of the griot class.That wasn’t a job you did because someone said you had to do it;you did it because that’s what you did. It was your right as a person.In terms of warriorship,you had to stand up and do what was right,what you were born to do…… In warriorship you have to be very present,very aware of where you are,where you’ve been and where you’re going. Part of what a warrior does,the compassion and generosity of warriorship,is to get the door open and hold it open for other people to come through.That means the warrior is often out there alone. Sometimes the door closes behind you and you don’t know it happened.Then you have to stop,put the guitar down,go back and get a wedge,and get the door open again,so..people can hear the music. You can’t be afraid,no matter what’s going on.” Taj Mahal Autobiography of A Bluesman
Taj Mahal
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Give a WOMAN a fish and she'll feed the whole family for a week!
Cameron Semmens (ICE SKATING IN THE TAJ MAHAL - a totally non-depressing look at poverty (in poems you'll want to share))
Why are we so easily swayed by facts forwarded by email? Why do so many Indians believe that the Taj Mahal was originally a temple called Tejo Mahalaya? Why do so many of us instantly believe and immediately proselytize that ‘India has never invaded any country in her last 1,000 years of history’ or that ‘The word “navigation” is derived from the Sanskrit navgath’ without even pausing to ask: ‘Is any of this actually true?
Sidin Vadukut (The Sceptical Patriot: Exploring the Truths Behind the Zero and Other Indian Glories)
Once upon a teenage mistake, Ash thought he was in forever love, the kind of love that started wars and built the Taj Mahal. He knew at that moment how wrong he'd been. Without his even realizing it, Ash had fallen for Fee, harder and faster than he'd ever fallen for anyone. This was the love he'd thought he'd had before, but there was no real comparison between the two. It was like putting a matchstick beside a raging inferno—one of them would be completely consumed.
Piper Vaughn (The Party Boy's Guide to Dating a Geek (Clumsy Cupid Guidebooks, #1))
A blush tinged her bronzed skin as she wrapped her arms around herself. Corrado grasped her wrists, pulling her hands away when she tried to shield herself. He stared at her, stunned to see the uncertainty in her eyes. "You're not nervous this time, are you?" he asked, half-teasingly, half honestly wanting to know. She'd been so confident, unwavering before. "It's the way you're looking at me." "How am I looking at you?" "Like you look at the Taj Mahal. Or the Sistine Chapel. You're staring at me like you stare at the Mona Lisa." "I've never seen those things." "It's like you've never seen something so beautiful before." "I haven’t.
J.M. Darhower (Made (Sempre, #0.4))
Give a man a teacher and he'll learn many a thing. Teach a man to learn and he'll learn from everything.
Cameron Semmens (ICE SKATING IN THE TAJ MAHAL - a totally non-depressing look at poverty (in poems you'll want to share))
Give a man a proverb and he’ll muse for a moment. Teach a man to find the verb in every proverb and he’ll walk in wisdom for a lifetime.
Cameron Semmens (ICE SKATING IN THE TAJ MAHAL - a totally non-depressing look at poverty (in poems you'll want to share))
When the earth falls into the sun...when the Taj Mahal, Mozart and the Mona Lisa burn to a crisp...what difference will it make.
Robert E Redding
Now remember, they say if two people go together to visit the Taj Mahal, that means they will always be together. Are you ready for that?" "Guess I'm stuck with you then.
Jalpa Williby (Chaysing Dreams (Chaysing Trilogy #1))
In 2021, we are five human lifetimes removed from the building of the Taj Mahal, and two lifetimes removed from the abolition of slavery in the United States. History, like human life, is at once incredibly fast and agonizingly slow.
John Green (The Anthropocene Reviewed)
You’re still in love with her. She makes you want to live life. Personally, and this is just me, man, if I ever met a woman who saved me that way, I’d devote some temples to her or something. That’s how the Taj Mahal got started, I’m sure.
Karina Halle (And With Madness Comes the Light (Experiment in Terror, #6.5))
Gold and silver taken from the Americas found its way to Asia; it was this redistribution of wealth that enabled the Taj Mahal to be built. Not without irony, one of the glories of India was the result of the suffering of “Indians” on the other side of the world.
Peter Frankopan (The Silk Roads: A New History of the World)
Most stupid Question Most of the time people ask What is Important for you Love Or Money My Answer :- Love inspire to Build Taj Mahal And Money Full fill the Dream Love Inspire you to give good life to your family and Money Do it For survive Soul, you need love For survive Body,You need Money
Mohammed Zaki Ansari ("Zaki's Gift Of Love")
As far as one journeys, as much as a man sees, from the turrets of the Taj Mahal to the Siberian wilds, he may eventually come to an unfortunate conclusion —usually while he's lying in bed, staring at the thatched ceiling of some substandard accommodation in Indochina," writes Swithin in his last book, the posthumously published Whereabouts, 1917 (1918). "It is impossible to rid himself of the relentless, cloying fever commonly known as Home. After seventy-three years of anguish I have found a cure, however. You must go home again, grit your teeth and however arduous the exercise, determine, without embellishment, your exact coordinates at Home, your longitudes and latitudes. Only then, will you stop looking back and see the spectacular view in front of you.
Marisha Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics)
Taj Mahal adalah bangunan yang menjadi bagian dari salah satu tujuh keajaiban dunia. Dibangun oleh Shah Jahan sebagai pusara bagi istrinya Mumtaz Mahal yang meninggal karena melahirkan sungsang ketika peperangan sedang berlangsung. Bagi Shah Jahan Taj Mahal adalah gambaran kecantikan dan keanggunan isterinya yang akan selalu dikenang oleh dirinya dan rakyatnya. Shah Jahan mengutus arsitek berdarah Persia untuk membangun Taj Mahal, Isa namanya. Yang akhirnya jatuh cinta pada Jahanara, puteri Shah Jahan yang bersuamikan Khondamir. Isa sangat mengagumi kecantikan Jahanara yang sangat mirip dengan ibunya, Mumtaz Mahal. Jahanara pun selingkuh dengan Isa yang juga sangat ia cintai, karena sejatinya Jahanara tidak pernah mencintai khondamir. Mereka menikah hanya karena alasan politik. Dibalik bangunan indah dan berdiri megah itu terdapat kisah yang haru, kejam, indah sekaligus membawa pembaca pada zaman kerajaan Hindustan.
John Shors
By such subtle signs, like an orchestra tuning up, the daily event that is central to life on the Coromandel Coast announces itself: the evening breeze. The Madras evening breeze has a body to it, its atomic constituents knitted together to create a thing of substance that strokes and cools the skin in the manner of a long, icy drink or a plunge into a mountain spring. It pushes through on a broad front, up and down the coast; unhurried, reliable, with no slack until after midnight, by which time it will have lulled them into beautiful sleep. It doesn’t know caste or privilege as it soothes the expatriates in their pocket mansions, the shirtless clerk sitting with his wife on the rooftop of his one-room house, and the pavement dwellers in their roadside squats. Digby has seen the cheery Muthu become distracted, his conversation clipped and morose, as he waits for the relief that comes from the direction of Sumatra and Malaya, gathering itself over the Bay of Bengal, carrying scents of orchids and salt, an airborne opiate that unclenches, unknots, and finally lets one forget the brutal heat of the day. “Yes, yes, you are having your Taj Mahal, your Golden Temple, your Eiffel Tower,” an educated Madrasi will say, “but can anything match our Madras evening breeze?
Abraham Verghese (The Covenant of Water)
How many of your snapshots could easily be replaced by a thousand identical others? Is there any value left in taking yet another photo of the moon, or the Taj Mahal, or the Eiffel Tower? Is a photograph just a kind of souvenir to prove you’ve been someplace, like a prefabricated piece of furniture that you happened to have assembled yourself?
John Koenig (The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows)
Jei įžeidžiau jus, Jūsų Šviesybe, vadinasi, nusipelnėte kiekvieno priekaišto.
Indu Sundaresan (Shadow Princess (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #3))
Una vez lanzada una acusación, por muy infundada que sea, la duda empieza a teñir la mente de quien la escucha.
Indu Sundaresan (The Twentieth Wife (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #1))
When a population becomes distracted by trivia,” wrote the cultural critic Neil Postman, “when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people becomes an audience and their public business a vaudeville, then a nation finds itself at risk: cultural-death is a clear possibility.”72 Con artists and swindlers exploit the frustrations and anger of a betrayed people. They make fantastic promises they never keep. They prey on the vulnerable. They demand godlike worship. They conjure up a world of illusions and fantasy. And then it implodes. The workers and patrons at the Trump Taj Mahal were victimized first. Now it is our turn.
Chris Hedges (America: The Farewell Tour)
I’ve been around the world, and I thought I’d seen everything it had to offer until that night, until I saw you. In all my life, I’ve never seen anything so beautiful, not standing in the Blue Mosque or the Taj Mahal. Not in the streets of Rome or canals of Venice. Making you smile gives me life. Making you laugh gives me hope. Making you happy is all I want, other than to keep you
Staci Hart (Chaser (Bad Habits, #2))
Isa looked down the river to the Taj Mahal. It shone harshly in the midday sun, the marble glared back at the sky and it stood isolated and alone. It needed a companion of beauty, but there was none in this world. Isa had thought long about the tomb; it had life, it breathed. He imagined the rise and fall of the stone as it sighed. He realized it was lonely. It was a perfect thing in an imperfect world, and that was an awesome burden.
Timeri N. Murari (Taj: A Story of Mughal India)
I recognized the great monument from the illustration in the copy of /The Jungle Book/ that my mother kept in the top drawer of my bedside table. When I went with Sophia to the Taj Mahal for the first time, I was not as enchanted by the real mausoleum as I had been by its plaster, paint, and paper replica in the studio; the original posed a dreadfully seductive promise in cool marble of a strangely painful loveliness, a lover's lie that death itself might in some mysterious way, because of love, be lovely.
Lee Siegel
I looked into the wind, feeling the day alternately warm and cool and warm again on my face and arms as the breeze turned and returned across the bay. A small fleet of fishing canoes drifted past us on their way back to the fishermen’s sandy refuge near the slum. I suddenly remembered the day in the rain, sailing in a canoe across the flooded forecourt of the Taj Mahal Hotel and beneath the booming, resonant dome of the Gateway Monument. I remembered Vinod’s love song, and the rain that night as Karla came into my arms.
Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)
We entered the Taj Mahal, the most romantic place on the planet, and possibly the most beautiful building on earth. We ate curry with our driver in a Delhi street café late at night and had the best chicken tikka I’ve ever tasted in an Agra restaurant. After the madness of Delhi, we were astonished that Agra could be even more mental. And we loved it. We marvelled at the architecture of the Red Fort, where Shah Jahan spent the last three years of his life, imprisoned and staring across at the Taj Mahal, the tomb of his favourite wife. We spent two days in a village constructed specifically for tiger safaris, although I didn’t see a tiger, my wife and son were more fortunate. We noticed in Mussoorie, 230 miles from the Tibetan border, evidence of Tibetan features in the faces of the Indians, and we paid just 770 rupees for the three of us to eat heartily in a Tibetan restaurant. Walking along the road accompanied by a cow became as common place as seeing a whole family of four without crash helmets on a motorcycle, a car going around a roundabout the wrong way, and cars approaching towards us on the wrong side of a duel carriageway. India has no traffic rules it seems.
Karl Wiggins (Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe)
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish with the right line, the right bait, at the right time of day, at the right sort of spot, and if he has the right recreational or commercial licence he may, with practise and experience, actually be able to feed himself and his family for a lifetime. And that is something worth fishing for!
Cameron Semmens (ICE SKATING IN THE TAJ MAHAL - a totally non-depressing look at poverty (in poems you'll want to share))
Many people don’t realize this, but the Taj Mahal is a single mausoleum, designed, constructed, and maintained for one woman: Mumtaz Mahal, the favorite wife of Emperor Shah Jahan. The emperor was so distressed by the death of his beloved that he commissioned the construction of the Taj Mahal. He preserved her body for the more than twenty years it took to build (from 1632 to 1653); he spent thirty-two million rupees (nearly a billion dollars in today’s currency), and employed twenty thousand of the world’s greatest artisans, imported Italian marble (which was not an easy thing to do in seventeenth-century India—and not to mention that India had its own makrana marble he could have been using), all to create a private tomb worthy of his lost love.
Will Smith (Will)
As far as one journeys, as much as a man sees, from the turrets of the Taj Mahal to the Siberian wilds, he may eventually come to an unfortunate conclusion—usually while he’s lying in bed, staring at the thatched ceiling of some substandard accommodation in Indochina,” writes Swithin in his last book, the posthumously published Whereabouts, 1917 (1918). “It is impossible to rid himself of the relentless, cloying fever commonly known as Home. After seventy-three years of anguish I have found a cure, however. You must go home again, grit your teeth and however arduous the exercise, determine, without embellishment, your exact coordinates at Home, your longitudes and latitudes. Only then, will you stop looking back and see the spectacular view in front of you.
Marisha Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics)
That the petitioner No. 2 is the founder President of an Institution, namely, “ Institute for Re-writing Indian (and World) History “. The aim and objective of that institution, which is a registered society having register no. F-1128 (T) as the public trust under the provision of Bombay Public Trust Act. Inter alia, is to re-discover the Indian history. The monumental places of historical importance in their real and true perspective having of the heritage of India. The true copy of memorandum of association of the aforesaid society / public trust having fundamental objectives along with Income tax exemption certificate under section 80-G (5) of I.T. Act, 1961 for period 1/4/2003 to 31/3/2006 are filed herewith as marked as Annexure No.1 and 2 to the writ petition. 5. That the founder-President of Petitioner’s Institution namely Shri P. N. Oak is a National born Citizen of India. He resides permanently at the address given in case title. The petitioner is a renowned author of 13 renowned books including the books, titled as, “ The Taj Mahal is a Temple Place”. This petition is related to Taj Mahal, Fatehpur- Sikiri, Red-fort at Agra, Etamaudaula, Jama- Masjid at Agra and other so called other monuments. All his books are the result of his long-standing research and unique rediscovery in the respective fields. The titles of his books speak well about the contents of the subject. His Critical analysis, dispassionate, scientific approach and reappraisal of facts and figures by using recognised tools used in the field gave him distinction through out the world. The true copy of the title page of book namely “The Taj Mahal is a Temple Palace” . written by Sri P. N. Oak, the author/ petitioner No. 2 is filed as Annexure –3 to this writ petition.
Yogesh Saxena
Elephanta caves, Mumbai-- I entered a world made of shadows and sudden brightness. The play of the light, the vastness of the space and its irregular form, the figures carved on the walls: all of it gave the place a sacred character, sacred in the deepest meaning of the word. In the shadows were the powerful reliefs and statues, many of them mutilated by the fanaticism of the Portuguese and the Muslims, but all of them majestic, solid, made of a solar material. Corporeal beauty, turned into living stone. Divinities of the earth, sexual incarnations of the most abstract thought, gods that were simultaneously intellectual and carnal, terrible and peaceful. ............................................................................ Gothic architecture is the music turned to stone; one could say that Hindu architecture is sculpted dance. The Absolute, the principle in whose matrix all contradictions dissolve (Brahma), is “neither this nor this nor this.” It is the way in which the great temples at Ellora, Ajanta, Karli, and other sites were built, carved out of mountains. In Islamic architecture, nothing is sculptural—exactly the opposite of the Hindu. The Red Fort, on the bank of the wide Jamuna River, is as powerful as a fort and as graceful as a palace. It is difficult to think of another tower that combines the height, solidity, and slender elegance of the Qutab Minar. The reddish stone, contrasting with the transparency of the air and the blue of the sky, gives the monument a vertical dynamism, like a huge rocket aimed at the stars. The mausoleum is like a poem made not of words but of trees, pools, avenues of sand and flowers: strict meters that cross and recross in angles that are obvious but no less surprising rhymes. Everything has been transformed into a construction made of cubes, hemispheres, and arcs: the universe reduced to its essential geometric elements. The abolition of time turned into space, space turned into a collection of shapes that are simultaneously solid and light, creations of another space, made of air. There is nothing terrifying in these tombs: they give the sensation of infinity and pacify the soul. The simplicity and harmony of their forms satisfy one of the most profound necessities of the spirit: the longing for order, the love of proportion. At the same time they arouse our fantasies. These monuments and gardens incite us to dream and to fly. They are magic carpets. Compare Ellora with the Taj Mahal, or the frescoes of Ajanta with Mughal miniatures. These are not distinct artistic styles, but rather two different visions of the world.
Octavio Paz (In Light Of India)
Not long after I learned about Frozen, I went to see a friend of mine who works in the music industry. We sat in his living room on the Upper East Side, facing each other in easy chairs, as he worked his way through a mountain of CDs. He played “Angel,” by the reggae singer Shaggy, and then “The Joker,” by the Steve Miller Band, and told me to listen very carefully to the similarity in bass lines. He played Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and then Muddy Waters’s “You Need Love,” to show the extent to which Led Zeppelin had mined the blues for inspiration. He played “Twice My Age,” by Shabba Ranks and Krystal, and then the saccharine ’70s pop standard “Seasons in the Sun,” until I could hear the echoes of the second song in the first. He played “Last Christmas,” by Wham! followed by Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” to explain why Manilow might have been startled when he first heard that song, and then “Joanna,” by Kool and the Gang, because, in a different way, “Last Christmas” was an homage to Kool and the Gang as well. “That sound you hear in Nirvana,” my friend said at one point, “that soft and then loud kind of exploding thing, a lot of that was inspired by the Pixies. Yet Kurt Cobain” — Nirvana’s lead singer and songwriter — “was such a genius that he managed to make it his own. And ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?” — here he was referring to perhaps the best-known Nirvana song. “That’s Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling.’ ” He began to hum the riff of the Boston hit, and said, “The first time I heard ‘Teen Spirit,’ I said, ‘That guitar lick is from “More Than a Feeling.” ’ But it was different — it was urgent and brilliant and new.” He played another CD. It was Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” a huge hit from the 1970s. The chorus has a distinctive, catchy hook — the kind of tune that millions of Americans probably hummed in the shower the year it came out. Then he put on “Taj Mahal,” by the Brazilian artist Jorge Ben Jor, which was recorded several years before the Rod Stewart song. In his twenties, my friend was a DJ at various downtown clubs, and at some point he’d become interested in world music. “I caught it back then,” he said. A small, sly smile spread across his face. The opening bars of “Taj Mahal” were very South American, a world away from what we had just listened to. And then I heard it. It was so obvious and unambiguous that I laughed out loud; virtually note for note, it was the hook from “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” It was possible that Rod Stewart had independently come up with that riff, because resemblance is not proof of influence. It was also possible that he’d been in Brazil, listened to some local music, and liked what he heard.
Malcolm Gladwell (What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures)
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime… UNLESS he's a vegan! In the desert! Without any bait!
Cameron Semmens (ICE SKATING IN THE TAJ MAHAL - a totally non-depressing look at poverty (in poems you'll want to share))
Give a man a fish shop and he’ll flounder. Teach a man to manage a fish shop, and he’ll learn to fill it!
Cameron Semmens (ICE SKATING IN THE TAJ MAHAL - a totally non-depressing look at poverty (in poems you'll want to share))
Give a man a fish and a kettle, and he may never feel its HIS kettle of fish. Teach a man to fish around for his OWN kettle, and that’s when you get a tasty home-made fish soup that everyone can enjoy!
Cameron Semmens (ICE SKATING IN THE TAJ MAHAL - a totally non-depressing look at poverty (in poems you'll want to share))
In portraiture I look for people that I recognise - 'Look, it's Uncle Tony' - or for the faces of film stars. The Madame Tussaud's school of art appreciation. In realist works I look for detail; 'Look at the eyelashes!' I say, in idiotic admiration at the fineness of the brush. 'Look at the reflection in his eye!' In abstract art I look for colour - 'I love the blue' as if the works of Rothko and Mondrian were little more than immense paint charts. I understand the superficial thrill of seeing the object in the flesh, so to speak; the sightseeing approach that lumps together the Grand Canyon, the Taj Mahal and the Sistine Chapel as items to tick off. I understand rarity and uniqueness, the 'how much?' school of criticism.
David Nicholls
No wonder that progress was so slow within the ancient empires. Anything of value—land, crops, livestock, buildings, even children—could be arbitrarily seized, and as the Chinese iron magnates learned, it often was. Worse yet, the tyrannical empires invested little of the wealth they extracted to increase production. They consumed it instead—often in various forms of display. The Egyptian pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Taj Mahal were all built as beautiful monuments to repressive rule;
Rodney Stark (How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity)
It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it’s, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.
Deb Caletti (The Queen of Everything)
Zampa, nena, haz caso a tu amigo Richard. Si eres capaz de mover ese culo blanco como la leche y plantarlo en la cueva de meditación todos los días durante los siguientes tres meses, te prometo que vas a ver cosas tan bonitas que te van a dar ganas de tirar piedras al Taj Mahal.
Anonymous
It's been my Buckingham Palace, my White House, my Taj Mahal, so coming here today as a real member is - well, it's a big deal.
Katie Crouch
...I've been told that this building is here waiting for me. It's been my Buckingham Palace, my White House, my Taj Mahal, so coming here today as a real member is - well, it's a big deal.
Katie Crouch
Paul Costelloe One of the most established and experienced names in British fashion, Irish-born Paul Costelloe has maintained a highly successful design label for more than twenty-five years. He was educated in Paris and Milan, and has since become known for his expertise in fabrics, primarily crisp linen and tweed. I remember another moment, in the pouring rain in Hyde Park, when Pavarotti was singing for an audience. Diana went up to him in a design of mine, a double-breasted suit consisting of a jacket and skirt. She was absolutely soaked and she was beautifully suntanned. To me, the most radiant photograph of her that has ever appeared anywhere was taken then. If you ever get a chance to look at it, you must. It is featured in a couple of books about her. It really is something special to me--I have it on my wall, in my studio, at this very moment. Whenever I look at it, I get a lump in my throat. There was another occasion when she wore something of mine that stands out in my mind. Diana was wearing a very sheer skirt and jacket and was standing in the sun. She was in India, in front of the Taj Mahal, and her skirt was see-through. Of course, the press went full out on that. My last memory of her is when she was wearing a linen dress of mine in Melbourne and was surrounded by a large group of Australian swimmers. That, for me, was a very exciting moment. She was always incredibly polite, incredibly generous. There is simply no comparison. She had a completely different manner from everyone else. I have been to Buckingham Palace, and she was always far above the rest. I must have been the one and only Irishman ever to dress a member of the Royal Family!
Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
The foyer they entered made the Taj Mahal look like Motel 6.
G.P. Ching (The Soulkeepers: Books 1-6 (The Souldkeepers, #1-6))
Richard Nixon, then the vice president, highlighted a six-room model ranch house to the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. “Soviet propaganda had been telling Russians in advance that the ranch house they would see at the U.S. exhibition was no more typical of workers’ homes in the U.S. than the Taj Mahal was typical in India or Buckingham Palace in Britain,” according to a Time magazine story.
Conor Dougherty (Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America)
My dustbin is not fragrant enough to preserve your Taj Mahal
P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar
You took away the meaning of temporary and threw the winds of eternity at me
Amina Mughal (A Piece of My Heart)
Shah Jahan built Taj Mahal for his wife, I wrote a book..
Ved Nishad (I Lost My Soul)
Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all. When the earth falls into the sun...when the Taj Mahal, Mozart and the Mona Lisa burn to a crisp...what difference will it make.
Robert E Redding
In the vastness of space, in the vastness of geologic time, some say that nothing matters very much and few things matter at all. When the earth falls into the sun…when the Taj Mahal, Mozart and the Mona Lisa burn to a crisp….what difference will it make?
Robert Redding
In the vastness of space, in the vastness of geologic time, some say that nothing matters very much and few things matter at all. When the earth falls into the sun…when the Taj Mahal, Mozart and the Mona Lisa burn to a crisp….what difference will it make?
Robert E. Redding
Who Needs the Taj Mahal when it's a drag to live at all?
Harlan Ellison (Sex Gang)
Mutability is the only constant thing in life. Nothing remains forever constant. The great works of art, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon succumb to the ravages of time. What is man that in this brief and insignificant life of his, he tries to immortalize and exalt himself? All in vanity. Death and time reduce all to nothing.
Sri Nehru Maharaj (I, Vagabond)
You visit these big companies. You walk in the front door and it looks like the Taj Mahal. You are expecting wonders, but you start talking to people and you find that it’s just an ordinary place with dispirited staff. They aren’t pursuing big ideas and, even if they are, there’s no mechanism for developing them.” He adds, “I often walk out of these companies depressed about the waste of the human talent working there. These companies must become profoundly more productive if they are to survive in our competitive global economy.
Stephen Denning (The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done)
But the journey to the building of the Taj Mahal is not straightforward. It involves monstrous egos, a flawless aesthetic vision, profligacy and also, fragile as the bulbul’s song, love.
Ira Mukhoty (Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire)
This history of wanting, Mahabat,” Sharif said slowly. “I have learned this much. It is better to want than to have a desire fulfilled. Once it is . . . it has little importance. So it will be for the Emperor.
Indu Sundaresan (The Feast of Roses (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #2))
Why, one time, I was using a grapple to break into the Taj Mahal in Cambodia.… ” “We need to be quiet, Dad,” Erica admonished him, then quickly added, “And the Taj Mahal is in India.” “There’s a secret one in Cambodia,” Alexander said quickly, but then clammed up.
Stuart Gibbs (Spy School British Invasion)
If one did not know how to follow orders, one would not know how to give them.
Indu Sundaresan (The Twentieth Wife (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #1))
Emperor would need a wife who was a companion, one with whom he could converse knowledgeably, one who would excite not only his passions, but also his mind.
Indu Sundaresan (The Twentieth Wife (Taj Mahal Trilogy, #1))
Follow That Man!
Raj Haldar (Word Travelers and the Taj Mahal Mystery)
Despite Nehru, the common culture has been under assault since Independence. Books have been written seeking to show that the Taj Mahal, one of India’s glories, was really more Hindu than Muslim. Indian history is being rewritten from the new point of view to describe the Muslims who ruled India for 700 years, as aliens and foreigners and Muslim rulers by and large as guilty of the worst intolerances, murders, rapes and plunders.
K.L. Gauba (Passive Voices: A Penetrating Study of Muslims in India)
research analysts were increasingly paid to be bullish rather than accurate. In one celebrated incident, an analyst who had the chutzpah to recommend that Trump’s Taj Mahal bonds be sold because they were unlikely to pay their interest was summarily fired by his firm after threats of legal retaliation from “The Donald” himself. (Later, the bonds did default.)
Burton G. Malkiel (A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing)
The Taj Mahal. An example of ‘authentic’ Indian culture, or the alien creation of Muslim imperialism?
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
Bitter truth about money Money can't buy you everything. True !! But the whole needs of your life, bread, food, home, medicine, education—nobody gifts you your whole life, nor is it free. Money is not so important.Yeh, absolutely right. Ohhh but it's just controlling, ruling, and running the whole world. And every second of life depends on this unimportant thing. Every bad thing happens just because of money. Problems in relationships, problems in nature, proud behavior, right? HUMAN..Human is evil; he needs something to blame for all his crimes.Money is an object and an easy, soft target. What's important in life? Money or love? The answer is simple. Love inspired to build the Taj Mahal. and Money fulfilled the dream. After all, we must learn to be happy in situations where we are. God is with One Who knows patient
Mohammed Zaki Ansari ("Zaki's Gift Of Love")
At the tail end of the Steel Wheels tour we liberated Prague, or so it felt. We played a concert there soon after the revolution that ended the communist regime. 'Tanks Roll Out, Stones Roll In' was the headline. It was a great coup by Václav Havel, the politician who had taken Czechoslovakia through a bloodless coup only months earlier, a brilliant move. Tanks were going out, and now we're going to have the Stones. We were glad to be part of it. Havel is perhaps the only head of state who has made, or would imagine making, a speech about the role that rock music played in political events leading to a revolution in the Eastern Bloc of Europe. He is the one politician I'm proud to have met. Lovely guy. He had a huge brass telescope in the palace, once he was president, and it was focused on the prison cell where he did six years. 'And every day I look through there to try and figure things out.' We lit the state palace for him. They couldn't afford to do it, so we asked Patrick Woodroffe, our lighting guru, to relight the huge castle. Patrick set him up, Taj Mahal'd him. We gave Václav this little white remote control with a tongue on it. He was like a kid, pushing buttons and going, whoa! It's not often you get to hang with presidents like that and say, Jesus, I like the cat.
Keith Richards (Life)
Consider propositions: the things that are true or false, that are capable of being believed, and that stand in logical relations to one another. They also have another property: aboutness or intentionality. Propositions represent reality or some part of it as being thus and so. This crucially connected with their being true or false. Many have thought it incredible that propositions should exist apart from the activity of minds. How could they just be there, if never thought of? Representing things as being thus and so, being about something or other--this seems to be a property or activity of minds or perhaps thoughts . It is extremely tempting to think of propositions as ontologically dependent upon mental or intellectual activity in such a way that either they just are thoughts, or else at any rate couldn't exist if not thought of. (According to the idealistic tradition beginning with Kant, propositions are essentially judgments.) But if we are thinking of human thinkers, then there are far too many propositions: at least, for example, one for every real number that is distinct from the Taj Mahal. On the other hand, if they were divine thoughts, no problem here. So perhaps we should think of propositions as divine thoughts. Then in our thinking we would literally be thinking God's thoughts after him.
Alvin Plantinga